Writing as if every word could change the world

‘Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all—ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple ‘I must” then build your life according to this necessity; your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and a testimony to it’

(Rilke, 1954, pp. 18–19)

In the best of worlds – and this is clearly not it but I hope that it could become so, one day, far down the line, if we humans could only get our act together – I want to write, always, not only ‘as if every word counted’ (Law, 2004, p. 12), but as if every word could change my life, as if it could make other lives and other worlds possible in an instant.

Because it can.

Every single word, even the tiniest, most innocuous little one, has that tremendous, transformative capacity. The words we choose, or the words that choose us, and the stories we tell with those words are always-already political, reminding us that ‘writing is world-making’ (Wegener, 2024, p. 66) and that ‘there are other ways of making worlds’ (Tsing, 2015, p. 155). See, a language that strives to be playful, kind, generous, vulnerable, affirmative or a voice that aspires to embody a profound love for life, they make worlds that are wildly different from, say, a neoliberal language of competition, infinite growth and a ‘politics of necessity’ or the distanced, rational voice of reason.

Different words, different worlds.

I have come to believe that every encounter, whether in person, faces to faces, bodies to bodies, or in writing, is a seed from which hitherto unknown worlds can grow. The ensuing responsibilities and possibilities are equally daunting and liberating, intimidating and hopeful.

The way I can exist in the world is made different by the words I use, each and every one alters my what I might become, if ever so slightly. Do I let myself become more sensitive to everything I encounter, human and more-than-human alike? Do I admit to being affected, goosebumps all over, by what I experience, however trivial it may seem? And do I dare put those decisions into writing?

If ‘one must be enamored with existence and occasionally even enchanted in the face of it in order to be capable of donating some of one’s scarce mortal resources to the service of others’ (Bennett, 2001, p. 4), then I contend that writing can help us fall in love with life, over and over.

As Deborah Bird Rose wrote so beautifully,

And that, to build on Rilke’s burning question, is why I write and what I aspire to do with my life and my words, even if I am often reluctant to openly admit so, lacking the courage to fully embrace the complete loss of control that the commitment to love inevitably entails.